Susanne's Adventure Journal

15.3 FT miles It rained last night. I didn't have cell signal, but the last time I checked, it was supposed to rain in the early morning as well. I wasn’t planning to do very many miles today, so I had the luxury of packing up my tent whenever I felt like the rain had stopped. When I did get moving, it was incredibly damp. Everything around me from the trees, to the ground, and even my shirt was damp. It must have been 100% humidity. While it was annoying at the moment, I knew it was going to be real uncomfortable later on when the temperatures approached 80 degrees (F). I headed through another series of WMAs/Wilderness areas. I keep going through them quickly, so most of the time I'm not sure which one I am in anymore. The soggy, morning trail. I walked through the standard forest areas until I got to a bog. Trail crews had made a nice boardwalk through the bog which protected both the bog and my shoes. It was a little slippery, so I made my way across sl...

10.5 FT miles, plus 2.0 miles from Ft. Christmas Baptist Church It started off as a good morning. I had slept indoors with heat, had fresh water, and my electronics were charged. I had plenty of time to organize my backpack and was even able to backwash my filter. Inside the rec room was a board where people could write their prayer requests and right at the top was “Florida Trail Walkers,” which I thought was sweet. I leisurely packed up and went to retrieve my resupply box from the post office. The plan was to bring my resupply back to the rec room to sort through it at the table. The post office was only a few steps away from the rec room, but I felt a little uneasy about being away from it unlocked. So, I took the two items that were particularly grabable, my DSLR and my inReach,  and temporarily  put them out of sight in a cabinet. I retrieved my box from the post office without too much trouble, and brought it back to the rec room. It was nice to be able to spr...

22.3 FT miles, and 2.0 miles to Ft. Christmas Baptist Church I made the decision to get up early today. There were a couple of reasons for this. The first was that I just wanted to get the last of the roadwalk out of the way.  The earlier I started, the less traffic there would be since it was a Sunday. It also would be cooler out. Road walks don't have any shelter from the sun and the asphalt reflects the heat. The second reason was that I wanted to get into the town of Christmas early. I had run into the problem of the only campground in the area that I needed to walk to today was a private campground (again). I had been on the phone yesterday several times, despite low battery, leaving messages and trying to get a hold of the people in charge. It didn't happen. I had a resupply box sent to the post office in Christmas that I would be picking up tomorrow. Last night I looked up the post office information and was disappointed to find it 2 miles off trail. I thought ...

20.9 FT miles This was the day I had been dreading for a while now. I was starting a long roadwalk section that had no camping breaks. There was further worry of a road closure that would turn a 16 mile section into a 38.5 mile detour. Luckily, this closure was scouted out a month ago by some locals and, even though there were “road closed" signs, the road was open along the route. I had also originally thought that I would have to make a very long detour to camp for the night. If I pushed 22/23 miles today, I would have the opportunity of reaching a campground a further 4 miles off trail. Luckily, when I checked some of the features on the map, there were unofficial suggestions of where to camp along the road. It looked like that is what other thru-hikers had previously done as well. As I was heading out of Bull Creek in the morning light, there was a car pulling into the trailhead area. There were two men inside and they asked me if I was a Florida Trail thru-hiker.  I...

14.8 FT miles I woke up before dawn, but didn't get up until well after sunrise. I was going to have a much shorter day today. There is a two day long roadwalk coming up, so I was going to head to the last available campsite before the roadwalk, then start it the following day. I packed up my things and went to attempt a shower again. While the hot water tap on the sink got really hot, I could still only get the shower to be warm. Like last night, the temps were probably in the upper 30s and a shower that was only warm was not going to cut it. If I waited a few hours for the outside temps to warm up, it probably would have worked out, but I felt like I needed to get going for the day. I filled up on potable water and got back on the trail. After a little while I reached a stile and climbed over into Bull Creek WMA. The trail through Bull Creek was fairly easy to follow, which was a welcome relief from my trail-finding adventures of the previous days. It continued to wind ...